THE UNINTERRUPTED SEQUENCE:

East and West at Arm's Length: A Conversation with Bernard Lewis (Bruce Cole, July 2006, Humanities)

Bruce Cole: Members of one culture are sometimes reluctant to understand enough about another culture, or even learn the other's language. What causes this?

Bernard Lewis: There have been many civilizations in the world, and the normal practice of civilizations has been to dismiss with contempt those outside. The world is divided into civilized people--that means us--and barbarians.

Cole: Us and them.

Lewis: Them. "Them" usually are regarded as barbarians. The Greeks and the Romans ruled the Middle East but did not bother to learn any of the languages.

Cole: [...] Why should we know about the Arab Middle Ages? Why should we know about the Ottoman Empire? What relevance does that have for us today?

Lewis: I think it's always important to understand both sides of a relationship. The relation between Christendom and the Islamic world begins with the advent of Islam in the seventh century. When Islam came into the world, the whole of the Middle East and North Africa were Christian. They were part of Christendom. So Islam first expanded--apart from Iran--largely into Christian territory and even into Europe. That started an ongoing relationship, which has continued ever since.

I would make the further point. This ongoing conflict between Christendom and Islam arises not so much from their differences as from their resemblances. There are many religions in the world and there are many civilizations in the world, but as far as I am aware, Christianity and Islam are the only two religions which claim to be the possessors of God's final and exclusive truth.

Most religions have a sort of "relativist approach." That's the term that is used by the Catholic Church to indicate disapproval, but I'm using it to indicate approval. The relativist view would be something like this: Just as men have invented different languages to talk to each other, so they've invented different religions to talk to God, and God understands all of them. Perhaps not all equally well, but he understands all of them.

There is an interesting passage in one of the sermons of Saint John Capistrano, a Franciscan. In one of his collected sermons, he says the Jews propagate this monstrous and absurd idea that everyone can be saved in his own religion. Now, Saint John Capistrano says many things about the Jews and the Muslims--both of whom he disliked intensely--but on that particular one he's right. The Talmud says the righteous of all faiths have a place in heaven. That's not the Christian or the Muslim point of view.

We--whichever the "we" may be--we are the fortunate recipients of God's final message to mankind. If you accept that message, you will be saved. If you don't accept it, then your religion is either incomplete and superseded or false-incomplete and superseded if it's previous, false if it's subsequent. Where you have two religions making the same claim with the same self-perception and the same geographical area, you get this uninterrupted sequence of jihad and crusade. But that, I think, is also some ground for hope. I tried to make this point at a conference in Morocco. The theme of the conference was: Is a dialog of civilizations possible? I tried to make the point that the conflicts have arisen from resemblances rather than from differences, and this should, with goodwill on both sides, make a dialog possible.

Cole: Is goodwill on both sides feasible?

Lewis: Goodwill on both sides is so far rather conspicuously lacking. But not entirely. I think there are people on both sides of goodwill. The late pope was trying to open a dialog with other religions. I don't know where the new one stands on this, but so far his utterances have been quite positive.

Cole: I think there are very few people who don't have strong opinions on Huntington's book, The Clash of Civilizations.

Lewis: As far as I'm concerned, what really matters is the clash between Christendom and Islam, which begins with the advent of Islam and is continued to the present day.

As I said before, there is the long history of jihad and crusade, attacking each other, invading each other.